Pentecostals Launch Major Thrust to Reach 1 Million Teens

By Audrey Barrick|Christian Post Reporter

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Thousands of Pentecostal youth from around the country are "Experiencing the Dream" at Indy '07, a National Youth Convention at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis.

Students have united this week for the youth event of the Assemblies of God – the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world – to launch a major campus evangelism initiative called Dreaming 2015.

"Indy07 is our launching pad for the greatest student evangelism thrust of our lifetime," said Jay Mooney, national Youth Ministries director. "The vision is to reach 1 million American teenagers and have them grafted into a local church by the end of 2015."

It's not another new program, Mooney explained, but the "call of the spirit" and a vision for a multitude of underdogs to become champions for Jesus Christ. And all of them are teenagers, said the youth director.

Dreaming 2015 aims for a growth from 370,000 teenagers to 1 million in less than a decade.

Mooney believes that this is the time and this is the generation from which the Pentecostal body can launch one of the greatest campus mission movements in the nation.

"Do you have a dream for a unique, victorious Pentecostal generation? A different kind of generation?" Mooney posed in a video.

Propelling the launch of the new vision are a team of top Christian musicians, speakers and new resources at Indy '07 . The Aug. 7-11 event also features a premier Fine Arts Festival, a daily Campus Tour, and an AIM (Ambassadors in Mission) Outreach.

The Campus Tour features performances by Group 1 Crew, Superchick and Kutless and workshops to help inspire and equip students to develop strategies to reach their campuses. The tour will culminate on Friday with the largest campus missionary commissioning service in the history of the Assemblies of God along with a World/U.S. Missionary Commissioning service. Thousands of students are expected to be commissioned as campus missionaries.

"I believe that this is the turning point that we all longed for in a future Pentecostal generation," said Mooney. “The campus becomes the most crucial battleground for our future success. It’s here and here alone that we should choose to leave our legacy.”

Indy '07 will also launch the Fire Bible Student Edition – a new Pentecostal study Bible for a new kind of generation – and a host of training resources, including an entire year's worth of sermons, PowerPoints and small group studies.

Indy '07 is taking place in conjunction with the biennial General Council meeting of the Assemblies of God this week in Indianapolis. Delegates will vote on a new head to succeed General Superintendent Thomas E. Trask who announced that he will step down from office, two years earlier than when his term ends. Trask was elected to his third four-year term in 2005 and under his leadership, the Assemblies of God has grown in membership to over 2.8 million in the United States.

The Aug. 8-11 General Council will join the Friday evening missionary commissioning service under the theme "Missions Everywhere."

Next Story : Survey: High School Seniors 'Graduating from God'

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robinhooud »

Thu Aug 09, 2007 4:23 pm Agree: 0 Disagree: 1

Hope they don't forget to preach and teach their own children. How many million young ones would that be. It's not numbers, preachers and parents, it's the people directly around you. Sometimes it's only between you and God, sadly. If preachers and parents don't sanctify themselves before God, what do the teenagers have to follow? Concerts, emotions, events? Will fade.
ProfessorX »

Thu Aug 09, 2007 5:43 am Agree: 1 Disagree: 1

Great effort to reach the lost; however, I would encourage them and others whether Baptist, Pentecostal or another group of believers, to preach the gospel of the kingdom over a particular denomination. Jesus never created denominations within the body of Christ. Denominations can become "demon nations" satan tries to conquer the church by the distraction of division. That's the reason why Europe is suffering spiritually and America is getting that way. While souls are dying, some "christians" are in fighting, and their blood in on our hands. Me must repent.

When churches and groups of churches become more focused on their denominational walls than discerning the body of Christ and obedience. Every Christian must be filled and directed by the Holy Spirit of God. Satan wants to fragment and divide the body of Christ so that we are not effective because he knows that if we have become offended at another member of Christ's body the favor of God lifts and humanism begins to set in. When humanism and self-propelled effort become the driving force, carnal-minded attitudes about the Christian life and seeker-friendly strategies are developed and passed down to the next generation, who in turn trust in formulas and traditions of past success more than the word of God and God's Holy Spirit. Some of them then begin to wonder what made the saints long ago so successful and wonder how they must have walked in the power of God. Those great Christian leaders of the past become memorialized and turn into religious icons of their veneration or worship because they must have been closer to God than themselves. Jesus Christ is our only example, mediator, and King. Any other mediator or system of belief that replaces the Lord, who IS THE CHRIST (not "a" christ), is ANTI-CHRIST. Now we see what happened to the Catholic Church. Today, who are those figure head examples? Charles Finney, Smith Wigglesworth, Chales spurgeon, John Wesley, George Washington, William branum, Johnathan Edwards, Jerry Fallwell, etc. Every believer has been called to walk in the same power and life in the holy spirit that the disciples of Christ Jesus did. They read and lived the word of God through that one-on-one relationship they had with the Lord.

Without the Holy Spirit we cannot even be saved nonetheless holy before the Lord. Without holiness no man can see God. The Lord calls us to have an active, one-on-one relationship with Himself. Unless we have unction from God we will not function right as His body. What does a person’s body look like from the outside when every part does not receive orders from the persons mind? It appears epileptic. That's how we appear when we are not walking with the Lord God in obedience, loving our brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.

http://evolutionfacts.blogspot.com/#the_message_that_we_were_born_to_hear

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